Luminosity (Gravity Series #3) (The Gravity Series) by Abigail Boyd

Charlotte. I think we have enough of your art on the desks here,” the teacher said sweetly, a touch of amusement in her voice. “You just lost another weapon.”
    “I’m just gonna get a new one,” Charlotte called to the teacher as she retreated back to the front.
    Charlotte turned her head before I could look away and caught me staring at her. She snorted at me, unfortunate considering her septum piercing. “What the hell are you looking at, vanilla?”
    I whipped my head in the other direction, blushing hard, and made a curtain with my hair so she couldn’t see my face. I waited for a spitball or a fist to land on me. Instead, I heard her rustling around. When I dared to look back, I saw she’d gotten out a ballpoint pen and was now doodling on the edge of the desk.
    Any other kid would have been kicked out of school for having a weapon. Why was she getting special privileges? Was it just this teacher? Sure, Charlotte was scary to her fellow students, but she was still mostly bad attitude from what I could tell. I’d never paid much attention to her before, but it seemed like an anomaly.
    I wondered if there were more kids given get-out-of-jail free cards that weren’t members of the popular club.
    The mysteries of Hawthorne were beginning to pile up so high that I could barely see past them. I spent the rest of detention carefully moving around the threads in my head, without any success in unraveling them.
    ###
    “I’m totally blocked,” Theo said. “I can’t even look at pens or paper without thinking they’ll sprout devil horns and attack me. It’s making it hard to even be in my room. I had to take my easel down.”
    We were catching up a few days later on the way to the commons for lunch. So far, my dreams had been normal, and nothing exciting had happened at school. A false sense of security was settling in.
    “Do you think it might have something to do with your dad?” Just mentioning Richard made my lips curl.
    “That’s what Alex thinks,” Theo said, worrying her bottom lip. Two fingers went to the bridge of her nose; a nervous habit that hadn’t disappeared even though her glasses had. “I’ve been helping him out repainting the kitchen. But he’s just eccentric, that’s all. The way that he says things—it’s not his fault he has no tact.”
    “But it’s probably not helping your concentration.”
    “It’s deeper than that. I mean, what if I get into school, and I can’t even draw a straight line?” she asked.
    “That’s not going to happen,” I said firmly. “Once you’re living back in Illinois, away from all this, things will be better.” I switched the subject, not wanting to make her too uncomfortable. “At least you have Alex there for you.”
    “Yeah, but he thinks the whole world is too critical and I’m just queen of the special snowflake girls.”
    “That’s sort of sweet. I wouldn’t mind that.” I neglected to say that sometimes Henry made me feel that way, which made a little pain stab my heart from missing him. It also made me feel like a big sap. What was I turning into?
    “It is sweet, but it’s the kind that’s too sweet, like eating a whole bag of Halloween candy,” Theo said.
    “You’ve done that before.” I pointed at my chest. “I was a witness.”
    Theo laughed a little. “Yeah, and then later I got really sick and yakked all over. He’s just too overprotective when it comes to me…I feel like he’s smothering me. And there’s a lot of tension when it comes to school, I mean‪—”
    Without warning, a distraught Lainey Ford rushed out of the nearby bathroom and slammed into Theo. I caught my friend before she could fall completely, and Lainey stumbled away as though drunk. The lack of apology was no shock.
    Madison Taylor, never far behind, almost took me down but Theo and I dodged out of the way.
    “We were walking here,” Theo grumbled, rubbing the impact spot on her arm. She pushed the empty space on the bridge of her nose